Side Character’s Second Life

On the Lunaris Festival, the palace banquet glittered with candlelight. It lasted until the Crown Prince rose and dismissed every consort of his for the sake of his first love, the woman he had never stopped idolizing.

Everyone else accepted the gold coins from the prince and returned home for reunions. I had nowhere to go. I found a rope and hanged myself at the gate of the Withered Court.

I had been reborn into this world and spent 21 years locked in the System's mission. It demanded that I court four designated male leads and earn absolute affection from at least one of them. I failed every route. The final path collapsed in my hands.

The System offered one last mercy. If this body died, I could return home and reunite with my family.

As my consciousness slipped away, I thought I heard someone scream my name, as if the world itself were breaking.

The Withered Court gate was not very high. After stacking two washbasins beneath the lintel, I finally managed to hook the cloth and haul myself up.

I was almost home.

The thought struck like stepping into a warm room after a blizzard. I ached to see my family again. I kicked off hard. Pain exploded at my throat, and the air vanished. The world collapsed into a brutal, ringing squeeze.

My thoughts blurred at the edges. Somewhere far away, lively, bright palace music continued to play, yet utterly indifferent to me. Each beat faded, as if someone were slowly lowering the volume.

Then everything I had lived through here rushed past in shattered, glittering fragments.

Twenty-one years in the Great Wayland Dynasty. I had been reborn into this body before I could even form words. I had four targets. The System had laid out the rules with brutal clarity: earn Absolute Affection from any one of them, and the version of me in my original world would be cured of the terminal illness waiting there like a sealed door.

Four chosen men, brilliant and untouchable, upheld the nation. Every one of them came to hate me to the bone because of the heroine. This was not the kind of hatred that sought explanations or apologies. It demanded a corpse.

In the end, the System marked my mission with a single verdict: Failure.

Thus, I gave them what they wanted. I was leaving.

Through the haze, I thought I heard someone shout my name. Then my breath caught, and for a brief moment, I couldn't inhale. But in the next instant, my lungs finally gave way, pulling in air once more.

A basin of icy water crashed over my head and face. I choked and coughed as the shock tore sound from me in harsh, broken bursts.

Water streamed through my hair and down my neck, soaking my thin clothes.

I blinked hard and looked up.

A man in a purple robe stood before me. Prayer beads slid between his fingers. His expression was dark and